Plants: Creating New Plants from Cuttings

by Mathew Needleman
Open Court Resources.com
School:
Saturn Street Elementary School
Grade Level:
1
Students:
8 boys and 8 girls. Eight ELL students. One student receiving RSP services. Students will need the cutting process modeled for them before beginning. Show students the roots of a plant when discussing roots for those who are English Language Learners.
Subject Area(s):
Science, Science as inquiry
Goal(s):
Students will learn another way that plants can grow other than from seeds.
Concept(s):
Roots can grow from stems.

Plants can be "cut off" at their stems and replanted.
Standards:
CA- CCTC: Aligned CSTP's and TPE's
• Standard : CSTP: Standard for Understanding and Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning
TPE: A. Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to Students
CSTP Description: Teachers exhibit strong working knowledge of subject matter and student development. Teachers organize curriculum to facilitate students? understanding of the central themes, concepts, and skills in the subject area. Teachers interrelate ideas and information within and across curricular areas to extend students? understanding. Teachers use their knowledge of student development, subject matter, instructional resources and teaching strategies to make subject matter accessible to all students.
• CSTP Key Element : Demonstrating knowledge of subject matter content and student development.
 Question : ensure that my subject matter knowledge is sufficient to support student learning?

CA- California K-12 Academic Content Standards
• Subject : Science
• Grade : Grade One
• Area : Life Sciences
• Sub-Strand 2: Plants and animals meet their needs in different ways. As a basis for understanding this concept:
 Standard a: Students know different plants and animals inhabit different kinds of environments and have external features that help them thrive in different kinds of places.
• Area : Investigation and Experimentation
• Sub-Strand 4: Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations. Students will:
 Standard a: Draw pictures that portray some features of the thing being described.
Objective(s):
Students will observe stem growth, infer that new plants can come from cut stems, and communicate this information with ninety percent accuracy.
Prerequisite Background Skills/Knowledge:
As in previous lessons, students should be familiar with roots and stems. By this time, students should have a good concept of these plant parts.
Vocabulary / Language Skills:
Cut off, grow, alive, node.

These words will be used in context as the plant experiments are conducted.

The word and concept: experiment will also be reviewed with students.
Materials:
English ivy
Another green plant
Clear plastic cups with holes
Water
Classroom Management:
Class must move in an orderly fashion to avoid knocking cups of water over. A system needs to be developed to allow everyone to see all of the plant cuttings in water without everyone moving over to the same area at one time.
Procedure:
Open
Revisit the KWL chart to see if there are any questions about where plants come from. If not then ask this question. Students probably will say seeds. Yes, we have grown Brassica from the Brassica seeds so seeds do grow plants (add this to chart). Are there any other ways that plants can grow?

Ask students what they think might happen if we broke off a piece of a plant and put it in water. We know that stems carry water to the leaves. Would the stem carry water to the leaves and keep it alive?

Body
Show students what a node is by thinking out loud as you look for a good place to cut off a piece of the English Ivy plant. Look for a piece that has at least one node (place where a leaf or branch comes out of the stem) but not a lot of leaves.

Allow partners to cut off pieces of the English Ivy and one other green plant. These cuttings should be placed in water and observations/predictions recorded.

Ongoing: Have students continue to record in their journals what they see happening as the cuttings grow roots and new leaves.

Close
Review with students way that plants can form. They should at this point know that plants can grow from both seeds and cuttings from other plants.
Assessment:
Students will be able to name two ways that new plants can form (seeds and cuttings) with ninety percent accuracy and be able to describe at least one feature of the growth from cuttings (e.g. root formation).
Reflection:
Most effective in the inquiry process this time was that the teacher was not sure if roots would actually grow from the stems. Students could see this and that made it more excited for all concerned. Students were able to see that some plants' stems would grow roots and others would not and were able to classify those plants that did. I would not conduct this experiment simultaneous to the Brassica planting again.